Maybe you've been carrying something that isn't entirely yours.
A pattern that keeps repeating. A grief that goes deeper than your own lifetime. A weight in your chest that you can't quite name but have been tending quietly, alone, for longer than you'd like to admit. Or perhaps you are carrying the weight of a loss in your life that has shaken you to the core.
The last few years have asked a lot of us. Many of us are navigating a world that feels fractured — politically, personally, ancestrally. And underneath all of it, there is a longing. Not to escape, but to understand. To heal something at the root. To stand in your lineage and say: this stops here, and something new begins. To truly grieve, integrate, and find peace within.
If that resonates, you're in the right place.
Join HeatherAsh Amara and Sarina Harz-Tolbert for our annual Day of the Dead Power Journey and Spiritual Pilgrimage in Teotihuacán, Mexico. This is a small-group (maximum 30 travelers), immersive 7-day experience centered on ancestral healing, ceremony, and the kind of transformation that follows you home.
Grief is not one thing.
It is the loss of a parent whose wisdom you still reach for. The animal companion who knew you better than most humans did. The friend whose absence leaves a shape in the room. The marriage that ended. The homeland that changed. The world you thought you were living in that no longer exists in the same form. The version of yourself — before illness, before loss, before the breaking — that you are still quietly mourning.
All of it belongs here.
The Day of the Dead tradition doesn't ask grief to be tidy or categorized. It asks us to honor what we love, in whatever form that love takes, and to do that honoring in community, in ceremony, in the presence of a place that has held human grief and transformation for thousands of years.
You don't need to know your family of origin or be in relationship with them to do this work. You don't need a blood lineage you can trace or a cultural tradition you were born into. HeatherAsh came to this work through her Toltec apprenticeship, not through Mexican heritage. Sarina through their European lineage and years of grief-informed practice. What we share is not a bloodline — it is a commitment to learning how to tend what we carry. That is the only requirement for being here.
What to Expect During this Experience:
During our seven days together, you will be guided through honoring, releasing, and receiving, whatever grief you have brought with you, from whatever source.
- Identify the grief that is ready to be tended — loss in your ancestral line, your own lifetime, or the larger world you inhabit
- Honor your beloved dead through ceremony, altar, and ritual — giving them a place outside your body to be seen and held
- Release what has been carried too long — inherited patterns, unprocessed loss, the weight of grief that has had nowhere to go
- Receive what your dead and your own deep knowing have been waiting to offer you — the love, the strength, the clarity that grief can obscure but never destroy
- Return home with practices for living with loss rather than being silenced by it — not because the grief is gone, but because you know how to tend it now
Why We Come to Teotihuacán
There are places on this earth that do something to you. Teotihuacán is one of them.
The name itself translates to "the place where humans become gods" — and after more than thirty years of journeying here, HeatherAsh will tell you: something in that translation is true.
This ancient pyramid complex outside Mexico City has been a site of initiation, ceremony, and healing for thousands of years. The Aztec, Toltec, and Nahua people understood that death was not an ending but a threshold, and they built their sacred sites accordingly. Walking these grounds, particularly during the Days of the Dead, you can feel that understanding in your body.
HeatherAsh first came to Teotihuacán in 1996 with her teacher don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements. She has been returning ever since — leading journeys, witnessing transformations, and watching this place work on people in ways that classroom teachings simply cannot replicate.
The Day of the Dead is not Halloween. It is one of Mexico's most ancient and beloved celebrations, a time when the boundary between the living and the dead becomes thin, and the dead are welcomed home. Being in Mexico during this time, surrounded by marigolds and altars and the genuine grief and joy of a culture that knows how to honor its dead, is unlike anything else.
Hear From Those Who Have Experienced The Magic of Teotihuacan...
What Your Seven Days Will Hold
We will be staying at the Dreaming House, a colorful, safe and sacred family-run retreat center in the heart of Teotihuacán. The Dreaming House is small enough to feel like home, held enough to let you go deep.
Each day is thoughtfully structured to move you through a complete arc of release, repair, and renewal. No two days are the same, and HeatherAsh and Sarina will be present and responsive to what the group needs as it unfolds.
Here's what you can expect across your seven days:
Ceremony and Sacred Site Work
We will meditate, pray, and do intentional visioning work at the pyramids and sacred sites around Teotihuacán, including walking the initiatory path of the ancestors through the Avenue of the Dead. These aren't tourist visits. They are guided, intentional experiences designed to open something in you.
Altar Building
You will create your own personal altar to your beloved dead — a tangible, physical act of honoring and inviting in the ancestors you are ready to work with. This practice alone has moved people profoundly, and you will have guidance every step of the way.
Ancestral Healing Ceremonies
HeatherAsh and Sarina will facilitate specific ceremonies for healing past ancestral and personal wounds, working with the lineage patterns you identified as ready to be released. These ceremonies are trauma-informed and carefully held. You will not be pushed beyond what you are ready for, and you will not be left to process alone.
Grief Circle
A dedicated group ritual held in ceremony for tending the grief we carry together. Not just ancestral grief, but the losses of this lifetime: the people, animals, relationships, and worlds we have loved and had to release. This is the space for what has had nowhere to go.
Daily Teachings
Each day includes dedicated time for HeatherAsh and Sarina's teachings — drawn from Toltec wisdom, grief-informed practice, and decades of working at this site with this material. The tools and practices you receive here are designed to travel home with you and continue working long after the week ends.
Daily Integration and Reflection
Experience without integration is just an event. Time is built into each day for personal reflection, journaling, and the slower internal work of making meaning. You will not leave with a head full of experiences and nowhere to put them.
Local Market Immersion
A visit to a nearby market to buy flowers, altar items, and experience the living Day of the Dead culture firsthand, one of the most beautiful and grounding days of the journey.
Optional Firewalk
Weather permitting, we will offer an optional firewalk dedicated to healing our hearts. This is always a choice, never a requirement — and whether you walk or witness, it is one of the most powerful evenings of the week.
A Note on How This Journey Is Held
HeatherAsh Amara has been leading transformational pilgrimages to Teotihuacán for over two decades. She knows this land, these pyramids, and this ceremony the way you know a place that has changed you, intimately, in the body. Her work with grief, ancestral healing, and the Toltec tradition is what called this retreat into being, and she will be present and actively facilitating throughout the full seven days.
Alongside her, Sarina Harz-Tolbert is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and trauma-informed practitioner who has spent a decade working with people navigating grief, loss, and deep healing. Their presence in this container is intentional. You will be held by someone who understands the nervous system, who knows how to support people when things get tender, and who brings both clinical expertise and deep ceremonial training to this work.
Together, they create a container that is both ceremonially grounded and emotionally held, the kind that can hold the full weight of what grief actually is.
You do not need to know your family of origin or be in relationship with them to do this work. You do not need a traceable lineage or a cultural tradition you were born into. Whatever you are carrying, whoever your beloved dead are, is enough. The ceremony meets you where you are.
This is not a retreat where you crack open and then get on a plane home alone. HeatherAsh and Sarina will be with you through the full experience, and the small group size of 30 travelers means you will receive genuine, personal attention throughout the week.
Your Journey: Dates, Details & Investment
October 28 – November 3, 2026
Teotihuacán, Mexico · 7 Days · Maximum 30 10 Travelers
Everything That's Included
Your investment covers the full experience from arrival to departure:
- 6 nights accommodations at the Dreaming House retreat center (double or triple occupancy)
- 3 meals daily featuring delicious, healthy, traditional Mexican food — special diets accommodated
- Ground transportation to and from Mexico City Airport
- All entrance fees to the sacred pyramid site
- Daily practices, teachings, ceremonies, and experiential activities with HeatherAsh and Sarina
- Your personal altar-building materials and guidance
- Full facilitation through all ancestral healing ceremonies and the generational healing circle
Flight to and from Mexico City is not included and is arranged independently.
If you are traveling with a friend or family member and would like to share a room, let us know after registration.
Your Investment
We want to name something directly: this is a significant financial commitment, and we don't take that lightly. What we can tell you is that every detail of this experience — the site, the facilitation, the intimate container, the meals and accommodations — has been carefully chosen to support the depth of work you're coming to do.
This is not a luxury retreat dressed up as healing. It is the real thing, in one of the most powerful places on earth, with facilitators who have been doing this work for decades.
Optional Upgrades
Private Room Upgrade $600
A limited number of private rooms are available at the Dreaming House for those who want their own space to rest and integrate. These are larger rooms with more privacy and go quickly, add this at checkout if it's calling you.
Marigold Magic Add-On Workshop $90
Join Shiila Safer after the main program concludes for a special workshop: dyeing silk scarves and bandanas with marigolds from our Day of the Dead altars. You'll take home a stunning piece of wearable art and the memory of making it. Class size is limited to 10. Register at checkout. Want to dye a second item? An additional $15 is paid directly to Shiila at the event.
A Note on Capacity
This journey is intentionally small. Thirty travelers is a hard cap, not a marketing number. When it's full, it's full. If you feel called to be there, early registration is the only way to guarantee your place and lock in the lower price.
Who Will Be Holding You Through This
You will not be navigating this week alone or unsupported. HeatherAsh and Sarina will be present with you through the full experience — and their combined range, HeatherAsh's thirty years of ceremonial and Toltec wisdom and Sarina's clinical and somatic expertise, means the container is both spiritually deep and genuinely safe.
HeatherAsh Amara
I have been traveling to Teotihuacán for thirty years.
I first came in 1996 with my teacher don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, as part of my long Toltec apprenticeship. I have led many journeys and retreats here since then, and this place continues to teach me. It has never given me the same lesson twice.
What I know after three decades of this work is that Teotihuacán does something that is very difficult to manufacture elsewhere. The land holds an invitation to shed what is not truly yours — the fears, the stories, the inherited patterns — and to meet yourself underneath all of it. I have watched this happen for people again and again. Not as a metaphor. As a real, felt, lasting shift.
I am the author of Warrior Goddess Training, Wild, Willing, and Wise, and many other books, and a Sundoor Master Firewalk Instructor. I have spent more than three decades guiding people through the kind of inner work that actually changes how you live when you go home. That is always the measure for me, not what happens in ceremony, but what becomes possible afterward.
I would be honored to introduce you to the magic of this place.
Sarina Harz-Tolbert
Sarina Harz-Tolbert is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, trauma-informed practitioner, ritualist, and certified wilderness rites of passage guide — and a ten-year apprentice of HeatherAsh Amara.
They bring something to this container that matters deeply for this kind of work: the ability to hold space for what is genuinely hard. Sarina has spent a decade working with people navigating grief, chronic illness, trauma, and the slow work of getting free. They understand the nervous system. They know how to support people when something tender surfaces and how to help you stay grounded when the work gets deep.
Sarina is also a Certified Master Firewalk Instructor, a Level 3 Warrior Goddess Facilitator, and a Warrior Heart Practice Facilitator. In the Warrior Goddess circle, they hold the element of earth, and that is exactly what they bring to this journey: steadiness, presence, and an unwavering capacity to hold you as you move through whatever is ready to move.
Is This Journey Calling You?
It doesn’t matter what sort of grief you are carrying… A person who died before you were ready. An animal who held a piece of your heart that nothing has quite replaced. A grief that doesn't fit neatly into any category but lives in you anyway — in the way you hold your breath sometimes, or the way certain songs or seasons bring something forward you can't quite name.
A loss that is more recent. Or more collective — the weight of a world that feels like it is grieving itself. Or the grief of not knowing your lineage at all, of carrying the particular ache of that absence.
All of your grief will be lovingly tended here.
You don't need the right tradition, a traceable lineage, or a category that neatly describes what you're carrying.
What this journey asks of you is simpler than that: a willingness to stop moving past it and start moving through it. To let ceremony and community and a place as ancient and alive as Teotihuacán do something that ordinary life simply cannot.
This is for people who know, somewhere in their body, that what they're carrying deserves more than quiet endurance. Who are ready to tend it, honor it, and let it teach them something — in the company of others who understand.
If that's you, you're in the right place.
Registration closes July 31 or when all 30 spots are filled.
Flight to and from Mexico City is not included.
Questions? Email us at hello@warriorgoddess.com
You May Be Wondering…
We do not offer refunds for this event. If you decide not to attend, we will happily cancel your payment plan and apply your completed payment(s) to a future event or program hosted by Amara Productions.
We require you notify us via email with your request to cancel and receive a credit before July 20, 2026.
After the cancellation period, ending on July 20, 2026, payment plans may not be canceled for any reason and credits will not be issued. When you register for a payment plan, you are committing to completing all monthly payments regardless of your attendance.
By registering for Ancestral Fire, you agree to these terms outlined above as well as the Terms & Conditions found here: https://warriorgoddess.com/logistics/terms-conditions/ and here: https://warriorgoddess.com/event-terms/
No! This trip is open to all genders.
No worries at all! You can intuitively pick things to bring to represent and call them in. We will discuss this on our pre-journey call.
Based on USD the ratio is close to a 16:1 conversion. That is approximately 16 Pesos for 1 USD. Expenses that are not included in your trip would be things like: snacks, personal items, souvenirs, compulsory tips for staff ($20 USD a day; to be collected on Day 2), laundry at the dreaming house (approx. $15 USD), tips for bathroom attendants at travel locations (small amounts of MXN pesos). Peso coins in 1, 2, 5, and 10 denominations for access to paid public bathrooms and purchase of toilet paper, money for additional outings, additional transportation, etc. If you are planning on purchasing many things, a suggested amount would be approximately $500 USD. If you aren’t, then $200 USD.
No, you do not have to speak Spanish, but having a small knowledge of common phrases is helpful. Having access to a small translation book or app can also be helpful.
Mexico is a vast and varied country, and we understand that news coverage can make it feel more dangerous than it often is in practice. Much of the crime that generates headlines is tied to specific cartel activity in specific regions, activity that does not take place in the areas where we travel and gather.
Teotihuacán is one of Mexico's most visited cultural and archaeological sites, located just outside Mexico City. Like any major travel destination, including cities across the United States, it carries some inherent risk. But statistically, the areas we visit are no more dangerous for tourists than traveling to any major American city.
HeatherAsh has been leading retreats to these exact sites for 25 years, multiple times each year. In that time, with hundreds of travelers, our groups have not experienced safety incidents. That's not a guarantee, no travel comes with one, but it is a meaningful track record.
When you arrive, you will be met at the Mexico City airport by a private driver and transported directly to our retreat center. You will not be navigating transportation alone.
If you have specific concerns about safety, please reach out to us directly at hello@warriorgoddess.com. We are happy to answer your questions honestly.
We are happy to help you plan your extended stay in Mexico. If you wish to stay at The Dreaming House for additional dates, then please let us know as soon as possible, so we can confirm that room is available and support you in booking that.
Have a question we haven’t answered here?
Feel free to use the LIVE chat feature on this page (down in the lower right corner) or email us at hello@warriorgoddess.com